Ezra Pound

A scrappy fellow from Idaho

Came to Europe to try to show

Poetry could break free from the past

Helped Hemingway Eliot Joyce 

Helped define the modern voice

Yeah Ezra Pound kicked off with a Blast

Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, you turned poetry around

Though your Cantos are a tough slog to this day

They seem so crabbed and bloated 

Were you crazy when you wrote it

You’re a wild man but I love you Ezra Pound

American life moved too shittily

So he settled down in Italy

Didn’t mind expressing his political view

Loved Mussolini and the fascists

Never tried to mask it

Spoke out for the Axis powers in World War Two

Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, are you brilliant or a clown

Are you a fascist or are you insane?

Your readers called you genius

But the Feds said you were treasonous

You’re a wild man but I love you Ezra Pound

I know that you fell into fascism pretty deep

But I won’t put you down for the company you keep

Didn’t Woody Guthrie after all fall in

With fellows who were followers of Stalin?

The Feds didn’t like what’d he expressed

So they put him to a mental test

Said he wasn’t guilty, just insane

Locked in the bughouse for twelve years

Didn’t change much it appears

Ezra Pound what went on in your brain?

Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, you’ve turned my head around

No one did more for modern poetry

You sure did make it new 

But you didn’t much like the Jews

You’re a wild man, but I love you Ezra Pound

Who(m) do you trust?

Who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?
Which one do you trust?

Museums are made by people, for a start 

And people are the ones who fill it up with art
That people have made to try to touch your heart

Or to touch your mind, your eye or touch some other part

No, culture’s just a weapon to tell us how to feel

It’s about control and not some big, lofty ideal

Of course that is the very thing the artist-types conceal

And instead they rely on artistic snob appeal

Who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?

Which one do you trust?

Now a mountain’s never going to try to tell you what to do 

A mountain will not preach about the value of virtue

But if you look and listen closely, then I’m sure that you

Will find that you can trust a mountain, a mountain’s always true

It’s a true a mountain’s true, a mountain’s never lied

But a mountain doesn’t care if we live or died

Though not every artwork may serve as a guide

Art connects us to the mountain that we have inside

So who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?
Which one do you trust?

Kind of a companion piece to "Mt. Holyoke." I imagine it with a Mike Nesmith finger-pickin' background

The View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton Massachusetts

We climbed Mount Holyoke to see the vista

Along with our dear friend, more like a sister

The clouds filtering pre-sunset rays

Creating a romantic golden haze

The sky, the light, the river: all sublime

Our friend says she takes pictures, every time

Forgetting the ones she has on her phone

Yet each one has a distinct look of its own

She told us there was a famous picture made

By Thomas Cole of this same mountain glade

Painted almost two hundred years ago

The same bend in the river, called oxbow

And though the mountain and the river are of course

Far older than the painting—they’re its source—

As we stand here late afternoon in October

I think how both picture and mountain will one day be over

A painting sometimes can become degraded

An artist’s reputation may have faded

Mountains crumble, they do not last forever

Flooding and dry seasons change a river

And though we may not say it in a song

Sometimes even love won’t last too long

For now we have both picture and the view, my love

For now we have a song for me and you, my love